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A group calling itself Defense Distributed has embarked upon a controversial project to make available schematics for a working plastic gun that could be downloaded and reproduced by anybody with a 3D printer.

Dubbed the Wiki Weapon Project, the initiative is the brainchild of University of Texas law student and Defense Distributed co-founder Cody Wilson and a group of like-minded friends with strong libertarian leaningsa mix of Ron Paul fans, hunting enthusiasts, and tech-savvy revolutionaries who see the availability of a "printable gun" as potentially upending power structures across the globe.

Defense Distributed is seeking $20,000 in seed money to develop CAD designs for a .22 caliber handgun made almost entirely of plastic parts that could be printed on an open-source RepRap printer. Initially, the group sought to create a prototype "WikiWep A" that would "instruct the design and development" of a fully printable "Wiki Weapon B" within three months or so, but Wilson told PCMag this week that an influx of outside technical support for the project might make it all happen even faster.

The de facto spokesman for the Wiki Weapon Project, who appears in a video plug for the Wiki Weapon Project (below), Wilson comes across as sophisticated beyond his 24 years but still very much in possession of a belief in the world-changing impact of one very powerful idea.

Speaking to PCMag this week, Wilson said he and his colleagues fully expected controversy to spring up over the idea of making firearms available outside of the legal framework that regulates the manufacture, distribution, and sale of guns in the United States and elsewhere.

'These Are the Consequences of Liberty'
"If people want to be hostile towards it, whatever, it's about getting the idea out there. Look, will this lower barriers to access to guns? Sure, but these are the consequences of liberty," he said. "We created the ability to destroy civilization more than half a century ago and today it's a totally banal idea or you know, we've managed to get by in a world with nuclear weapons. So why would the Wiki Weapon ruin the world?"

Defense Distributed may have already encountered some real-world pushback from ideological opponents of the Wiki Weapon Project. The group had set up a pitch page on crowd-funding website Indiegogo, raising $2,000 in an initial push for funding.

That page, along with the pledged cash, disappeared on Thursday and Wilson said he hasn't been able to find out from Indiegogo what happened. It might have been a glitch, a temporary administrative hold in response to a user complaint, or something more permanent, he said. For now, the Wiki Weapon Project has managed to scratch back about half of the lost Indiegogo funding through direct fundraising.

Wilson is adamant that Defense Distributed doesn't want engage in a pitched ideological battle with gun-control advocates. But he did admit that his crew recently sent out a taunting fax that read simply, "It's Over" under an image of a printed gun to the Brady Campaign and similar groups.

Those japes aside, he said he views the Wiki Weapon Project as more of an inevitability than anything else. The initiative is simply the natural outgrowth of a technology that will make printed guns available whether Wilson and his team succeed in their efforts or not, he said.

"It's kind of a first step. Symbols are important. It's a symbol, it says, 'Guns can be printed,'" Wilson told us. "It opens whole new frontiers for intellectual property. A ton of stuff is going to happen in the next decade. I'm not saying our particular project is going to revolutionize the world. But if this project totally fails and we suck at life, guns will be printable by someone, somewhere."

If that sounds like the classic "somebody's going to do it anyway, so it might as well be me" cop-out, Wilson takes a longer view of the issue. We chatted about the nuclear bomb analogy, discussing the futility of trying to squeeze the proverbial toothpaste back into the tube. He concludes that when a disruptive technology like 3D printing comes along, it's wiser to start dealing with the new reality rather than beating your head against the wall trying to somehow un-invent it.

But are printed guns really all that close to being invented? In contrast to Defense Distributed's belief that they're just around the corner, Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation is a lot more dubious.

About the Author

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Ch... See Full Bio

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